Bruce Campbell, beloved as the star of the Evil Dead cycle, did a great job in Bubba Ho-Tep. His Elvis impersonation pretty much has to carry the film, & he very nearly succeeds.
Don Coscarelli is the director of the Beastmaster & Phantasm franchises, & with this first "Bubba" film may be on the trail of a third francise, with a prequel, Bubba Noservatu, announced in 2005.
In a story based on a tale by Joe R. Landsdale, Bruce's Elvis Presley is locked up in an elder care home for the mentally ill oldfolks in rural Texas. Elvis's best friend is an aging John F. Kennedy, played with tragic whimsey by the late great Ossie Davis. The two of them are about to be confronted by ancient Egyptian evil. No one is going to believe anything said by two loony old geezers, so if their fellow nursing home residents are to be saved, it's up to them.
There's considerable humor in heading off to fight a monster in one's wheelchair, but underneath the slapstick there is also a serious story about the fate of the elderly in America.
It's too bad there wasn't a little more imagination in the monster portion of the story, but if Campbell's aged Elvis & Ossie's Jack Kennedy are the only things the film delivers with any panache, that's enough to make it worth viewing. But one can't help but lament the film it might have been if the monster story wasn't so clunky one-note ordinary.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
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